I am building a captured King Tiger put back into service by the Americans in 1944 as my “Under new Ownership build” On this link, 9 pictures down is the picture I am going from… I cannot tell if this puppy has zimmerit or not and it also seems as if the front hull MG is gone…
If this DOES have zim, it will be thus my first attempt but I have never used the resin plates… Can you guys look at the pic and maybe some of the younger eyes can tell if there is Zimm or not.
Secondly, the resin zimm plates fit OVER the model or does it REPLACE some of the parts… Thanks for taking the time.
I agree that it is hard to see if there is zim or not on the tank in this picture, but Thomas L. Jentz’s book “Tigers at the front” have 4 pictures of this tank from different angles. It is clear from these pics that it does have zimmerit.
Also there is something written on the gun mantlet, according to Waldemar Trojca it says “warning mined”.
Its from 2. kompanie / Schwere panzer abteilung 506. One of the strange things is the way the turret numbers have been written, its 2 ( balkenkreuz ) 11 or in another way 2 + 11 ( the + is the balkenkreuz ).
Here is how Wolfgang Schneider describes it.
“…the Tiger IIs delivered later had dark green and earth brown spots. The unit changed to a 3 digit numbering system but still numbered the tanks in the companies from “1” to “14”. The company digit was painted on the left, the other 2 digits on the right side of the balkenkreuz. The 2nd company had red numbers with a white outline…”
Yes it was written in english !! What makes you think it was repainted OD ??
If it had been repainted the turret numbers and the balkenkreuz would be missing, but they are still there.
No, from the side view pic in one of my books the turret numbers and the balkenkreuz is clearly visible and it also looks like it has the standard german three tone camo. But I have no text to actually confirm it.
can you see the stars in the pic I referenced? Seems like the german tanks would have been repainted to avoid friendly fire… i appreciate the info, i would have done this all wrong
now that i look closer, I can see the lines of the cammo… so much for my idea. LOL
well, I may just do a fictional US OD King Tiger anyways for the sake of the build…
Yes I see the stars. And there were more stars than you can see in that pic. In addition to the 2 stars that can be seen in the pic that you posted a link to, there is a big one on the rear of the turret, it actually covers the entire rear plate of the turret, and there is another one on the middle of the left side of the turret.
About the friendly fire, Yes I understand your thinking here. But the americans never intended to use it in combat they just wanted to have fun with it … and they did, infact they had so much fun with it that it broke down not long after these pics were taken
Jentz is right. Look at the picture just to the left of the mantlet You can really see the zimm texture there. The rest is really hard to tell from the photo, though
Just to confirm your zim question, If you look right behind the assistant drivers head you can see what looks like zim. And it looks like that cloth the stars are on are OD.
About resin zim, I believe CMK has drop in replacement parts with zim on them. But My cavalier zim has required me to cut off all rasied stuff were noted on my tiger, this included things like turret vision ports. The zim set also came with a resin gun manlet and loaders hatch? (the one on the side of the Tigers turret)
heck, i’m going to use this in john’s build (rebelrenactor) anyways… doesn’t have to be historically accurate, so this puppy is going to get a coat of OD and some AM… Already bought some extra stars from Archer and some decal paper for my PC to come up with some kind of slogan put on by the americans… i was thinking “finders keepers”
So, I guess I should order the CMK resin instead of the Cavalier? This will be my first attempt at resin…
Yeah thats what I figured, but I got a bit confused. Infact the purpose of the rear hatch was to replace the main gun, but ofcourse the crews found other uses for it.